This Is What Happy Looks Like(21)
When it was finally time to start, Graham took a long breath. He was supposed to go running down the street, hook Olivia around the waist, and then half pick her up as they kissed. It was, to be honest, a bit more acrobatic than Graham thought was realistic, and when they’d practiced it, it hadn’t gone particularly well. He wasn’t bad at scooping her up, but the momentum of the whole thing and the way that they spun often meant he missed her when he went for the kiss, and twice he’d gotten her neck instead.
“This isn’t Twilight,” she’d snapped.
Now he was poised to run, and the moment the director called “Action,” he was moving fast down the street. He’d been a center forward on his soccer team before he stopped going to school, and this part was fun for him, the sea air in his lungs, his muscles straining, his flip-flops slapping at the pavement. A blue car with a stunt driver inside pulled out from the curb and Graham did a little half hop to avoid it, but as he moved sideways, the strap of his flip-flop broke, and he ended up tripping over it.
The director yelled “Cut” and the cameramen poked their heads out from behind the huge black boxes. As the stunt man backed the car into the start spot again and Olivia sighed from down the street, an assistant from the costume department ran out with a spare sandal, which Graham tugged onto his foot. He wondered how many they had back there; it would be interesting to know what the flip-flop budget was for a movie like this.
On the second take, he made it all the way down to Olivia, and he even managed to execute the kiss perfectly, but when he looked up again, the director was frowning.
“That felt like… nothing,” he said. “At best, that’ll get a yawn out of the audience. Let’s aim a little higher, shall we?”
Graham glanced over at the crowd, wondering if he should be embarrassed at this affront to his kissing skills. On the next try, he thought he’d done better, but was met with similar criticism.
“Boring,” the director said. “Could we create a little more chemistry?”
Graham gritted his teeth. The guy might be brilliant, but he had an annoying habit of constantly saying “we” when he meant “you,” and Graham was pretty sure chemistry wasn’t something you could just create anyway; it was either there or it wasn’t, and with Olivia, it simply wasn’t. Yet somehow, even though there were two people involved in this kiss, Graham was the only one getting a lecture. Still, he nodded gamely, and set himself up to try again.
This time was apparently no better.
As he stood there listening to Mick talk to him about passion and beauty and the true meaning of love, his eyes wandered past the cameras and the crowds and the security guards, to where a girl with red hair was cutting across the town green.
“We have to make them believe it,” Mick was saying, and he reached out and thumped Graham on the chest. “We have to make them feel it here.”
“Uh, can you hold on just a minute?” Graham asked, taking a few steps backward. “I just need a short break…”
“Yes,” Mick said. “Good. Exactly. Let’s give this a bit of a think, and when you come back, I want you to be filled with passion. Got it?”
Graham nodded, his eyes still on Ellie. “Got it.”
He started out walking as casually as he could manage, but as soon as he was past the security barrier, he picked up a run. He was aware of the many pairs of eyes on his back as he jogged through the square of green grass at the center of town, but he couldn’t make himself care.
She was walking fast now, her eyes deliberately forward. She wore a jean skirt not unlike Olivia’s, only longer, with a plain black tank top, and her red hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. As he approached, he could see the sprinkling of freckles on her arms and legs, the skin beneath them pale in the morning light.
“Ellie,” he said when he was a few feet away, the word coming out in a puff of air. He paused to catch his breath as she turned around, looking unsurprised to find him there. Her eyes darted over to the film set, about a hundred yards behind them, and she took a few steps to her left, moving around the side of a gazebo. Graham hesitated only a moment before following her.
“Hi,” he said, his heart still beating fast. “How are you?”
She smiled. “Did you go for a swim?”
He shook his head, confused, and then realized he was wearing nothing but swim trunks. “No,” he said, suddenly self-conscious. “I’m in costume. We’re shooting a scene over there.”
Ellie nodded. “So what are you doing over here?”
“I wanted to say hello.”
She smiled. “Good morning.”
“Howdy,” he said with a grin. Her eyes were very green, and he felt suddenly and uncharacteristically flustered as they landed on him. “Are you on your way to work?”
She nodded.
“What are you doing later?”
“Why, are you going to ask me to dinner at the Lobster Pot?”
Graham started to answer and then realized she was kidding. “I was just hoping maybe I’d run into you.”
She smiled. “Well, that’s the nice thing about small towns.”
Graham was about to respond when she turned and began to walk away, making her way up the green with surprising speed. He couldn’t help but be stunned by the quickness of it all, and there was nothing for him to do but watch her go, hoping she might turn around. But she never did, and it wasn’t until she reached the door of a blue storefront that Graham realized what had caused her to take off. Behind him, a group of photographers was rushing over, stumbling a bit on the uneven grass in their efforts to reach him first.